The date is October 29, 2018, and Britain faces its darkest hour. On the battlefields of Europe, our Armed Forces have been humiliated.

In makeshift prison camps on the continent, thousands of our young men and women sit forlornly, testament to the collapse of our ambitions.

From the killing grounds of Belgium to the scarred streets of Athens, a continent continues to bleed. And, in the east, the Russian bear inexorably tightens its grip, an old empire rising from the wreckage of the European dream.

Yesterday, after a run of military defeats unequalled in our history, the Prime Minister offered his resignation. There is talk of a National Government, but no one has any illusions of another Churchill waiting in the wings.

In suburban streets across Britain, old men and callow teenagers are digging defensive positions in the cold autumn air. But with equipment scarce and ammunition non-existent, the Home Guard would barely last a week.

And all the time, across the Channel, enemy forces make their final preparations for the inevitable invasion. Some talk of surrender; no one speaks of victory. Less than ten years ago, millions still believed in a peaceful, united Europe. How did it come to this?

When future historians look back on our humiliation, they will surely judge that the turning point was the last week in October 2011.

Largely forgotten today, the main event was yet another interminable European summit in Brussels — the 14th attempt to ‘save the euro’ in just 20 months.

Hoping to secure German support for a massive one trillion euro rescue package, Chancellor Angela Merkel gave her parliamentarians a chillingly prescient warning.

‘No one should believe that another half century of peace in Europe is a given — it’s not,’ she said.

‘So I say again: if the euro collapses, Europe collapses. That can’t happen.’

At the time, many observers scoffed that she was being absurdly melodramatic. But, seven years on, no one is laughing.

What Mrs Merkel had grasped — and what many European leaders refused to recognise — was that the Continent was threatened by a toxic combination of spiralling debt, economic recession, surging anarchism and a pervasive collapse of confidence in capitalism itself.